Sunday, 12 April 2015

Work in Progress

So. The playtest version of the Chariot rulebook is well on the way to being written. I expect in its basic form it'll run to about 128 pages, large format.

I'm going ahead and illustrating it myself, both with digital and pen and paper illos. You've seen some of the preliminary sketches and digital stuff already. It seems right. It's my baby, this.

While the playtest version is in, well, playtest, I'm going to crack on and make a Tarot deck of my own, which will work with the book, and will feature the signature characters from the setting, among other things. I already have about eight cards drawn or roughed out and more planned. The plan is for it to be in full colour, and on nice big cards, and if you are into using Tarot cards the way that, you know, they're supposed to be used, well, it'll work with that. It'll be an extra ten or eleven quids to buy, I imagine.

I appreciate that making 78 heavily symbolic illustrations is the direction in which madness lies, but hey. Labours of love.

Besides, it's some years since I've done a proper illustration project, so it's definitely going to blow away those cobwebs.

When the playtest version is back and has been tested to near-destruction, edits have been made, the text is in layout (yeah, that's me too) and the Tarot deck is drawn, the crowdfunder begins.

The plan for that is that with a completed work, people will pay for a pdf or a book, with the option of a Tarot deck, and that they will receive what they pay for whatever, regardless whether the funder receives its goal amount.

If the funder does reach its goal, stretch goals will include more written material; my friend and colleague Malcolm Sheppard (who has worked on Mage, Vampire, Mummy and many others) has, I hope he doesn't mind me saying, already agreed to provide more of that good setting and adventure stuff should the funder raise enough.
The intention is a project where no real risk is present. Nothing is sold until it's ready. The game happens whatever. How big it is, how fancy, depends upon how many people want it.